Progress Monitoring: Conceptual, Methodological, and Practical Applications

Within the past decade, considerable emphasis has been placed on the design and implementation of intervention services in educational settings. Three recent influences have contributed to this emphasis. First, interest in providing psychoeducational services for children with disabilities has increased. The enactment of the Education of All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (Pub. L. 94–142) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1990, as well as the 1997 reauthorization of IDEA, have focused attention on providing quality psychoeducational services to youth with disabilities. Consequently, interest in developing intervention or problem-solving teams in schools has increased. These teams of school professionals focus on the design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions implemented with children prior to and following referral to special education services. This focus has cultivated an increased interest in appropriate methods for determining the efficacy of school-based interventions so that interest in the development of evidence-based interventions (EBIs) and practices has grown over the past 5 to 7 years. This focus, evident within medicine, mental health, and, most recently, education, has increased awareness about the need to implement prevention and intervention programs that are based on sound scientific research. Such research requires the evaluation of intervention outcomes, thus increasing the importance of intervention evaluation in educational settings.

Together, these influences have increased interest in and thus the need for (a) efficient, appropriate methods for assessing the effectiveness of schoolbased interventions and (b) processes for making decisions about the need to continue, modify, or discontinue intervention services. Progress monitoring addresses these needs by providing a systematic process that includes (a) developing explicit intervention outcome goals for students, (b) assessing a student's progress toward these goals, and (c) making data-based decisions about intervention services.